im not subscribed to the prison abolition thing fully but i want to learn. what happens to mass killers? how would they be reformed in this ideology if they would be? how do u make sure they dont do it again? is the official stance that mass murder is not inherent to the human condition? thanks
I don’t have the time to give you a detailed answer but there’s a German Marxist who recently uploaded a pretty good video on the subject. Unfortunately it’s in German but the auto translated subtitles work well. https://youtu.be/zKcSIEbjCUg
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Like others have said, the solution is to replace punishment with rehab and better material conditions.
You can’t punish people into becoming “good”, many just relish their hidden sadistic side to aid in the degradation of a person deemed Vogelfrei under the mask of virtue - the actual victim is little to be found there.
99% of mass killers are products of certain material conditions that will need to be addressed before prisons can be abolished
the main argument behind prison abolition is that crime (including murder) comes from economic conditions. so, crime should be combatted by improving economic / social conditions of society. thus, a society that has fully embraced abolitionism is also a communist society
on a short-term scale, I personally like to think of as ‘revolutionary’ abolitionism, meanining substituting the police by revolutionary organisations. clearest example: red guards during 1917 revolution. capitalist policing is abolited in favour of worker organisations enforcing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Prison abolition should go alongside other demands, such as better housing, schools, and mental healthcare. A mass killer is a person with severe psychiatric issues who fell through every layer that should exist to educate or rehabilitate them before any crime is committed. A crime like mass murder is a societal failure through several vectors.
I would hope a society that gets close to prison abolition would already have other means to deal with a potential mass killer before any murders are actually committed.
In The Netherlands we have this system which boils down to you becoming under the supervision of the state so that you can get psychological treatment. People who get these measures have often committed heavy crimes like murder or rape and often have mental problems. It is an indefinite measure that can go on as long as the psychiatrists deem it necessary.
It is not a perfect system but I figure something like that could be build in a socialist state as well.
There was a famous homicide local to my city (1985) in which a teenager (16) murdered his family. There were signs that something was off with him prior to the murder, but it was ignored. During the investigation, a psychologist diagnosed him with a mental illness that greatly contributed to his actions, but that was also ignored. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He was recently placed on probation due to a state law mandating that minors can no longer be given such sentences. The public reaction was that he was a monster who should never be allowed any freedom. They cared more about punishing him, rather than recognizing that he was mentally ill, because it made them feel safer. That boy had his entire life taken away from him for having a mental condition he couldn’t control, just to make everyone else feel safe. I can’t comprehend how people can be so callous.
Had he been born in your nation, he might have gotten help without being locked up for life. He’s in his 50’s now. More than half of his life is over. How is he going to function in society now? He has no occupational skills, no concept of the world outside of prison. He’s a proverbial man out of place in time.
yeah buddy but the thing is prison abolition entails that even nordic model jails are torturous which is what i struggle with
You can only get this if you are deemed a danger to society and the goal is to rehabilitate the person so they can go back to society without being a danger. If in a socialist state with all its prevention methods someone still commits an act of mass murder, you will have to find a way to also protect the safety of the society, possibly at the cost of this individual.
Isn’t that simply the psychiatric prison system that exists in most nations? For example, there is a prevailing belief that if an individual in the US is deemed unfit for trial or ‘not guilty on reason of mental defect’, then the person is allowed to go free, when in reality the person is remanded to a psychiatric facility for as long as the psychiatrists deem necessary.
I’m not too familiar with the differences or similarities of different systems
The really messed up thing is, if someone gets the death penalty and is legally deemed incompetent, the system will supposedly work to get them competent, since it’s supposedly illegal to kill them until they’re competent.
That’s not exactly how things work.
To determine someone guilty of most heinous crimes such as murder in the first degree, the persecution must prove that at the moment a crime happened, the suspect was in a lucid state of mind, willingly committed the crime, and understood the nature of the crime they were committing. If a person was indisposed because of a schizophrenic break when the crime was committed for example, the person cannot reasonably be accused of willful intent. That’s when a sentence of ‘Not guilt by reason of mental defect’ comes into play. A person cannot be retried after that sentence is entered, and the person will be remanded to a psychiatric facility for decades. This is why all the mass killers immediately claim to hear voices telling them to kill others, as in the example of Nicholas Cruz; as those deemed not in control of their facilities during a crime cannot be sentenced to death.
Essentially the state deems your removal from society pertinent, but the court cannot issue a sentence dependent on willful intent. In states where the death penalty is in play, courts require that willful intent is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, meaning that such indisposed suspects cannot receive the death penalty.
A person being fit to stand trial is a whole different matter, and moreso relates to the persons mental or physical state after a crime has taken place. So if a person suffers a mental break, rapid escalation of mental symptoms, or other debilitating factors, then the trial will be stayed until the person is fit to stand before the court. This also applies to injured suspects, as no judge is forcing a suspect with four gunshot wounds to testify in court, and that suspect’s trial will most likely be rescheduled for a time in the future.
‘Not guilty by reason of mental defect’ is a concluding sentence, ‘Unfit to stand trial’ is a temporary, pre-trial modifier for when the court has a reason to believe that whatever ails the suspect did not influence the crime.
Thanks, yes, I skipped a lot.
Prison abolition is not viable in the forseeable future.
I think the future becomes less forseeable by the day.
It’s not even about foresight per se. It’s about a very simple question. Let’s assume taht we even are in the primary stages of socialism, which means some vestiges of capitalism are still residing in all of us, and as such, also crime. What do you do with criminals, thiefs, etc.? Reeducation through labour of course, or in other words - prison. Only when the material and superstructural causes for crime to be commited are gone, and as such, crime withers away, only then can prisons be done away with. So don’t hit me with “future is less forseeable” as if it were some mystical thing, instead of a question that can be worked out scientifically/logically.
I’m just saying that I have no idea how long the “forseeable” future is, especially with things as they are. It’s not mystical. I didn’t even disagree with you, I’m just saying it’s a bit of a vague term. We may have different ideas as to how slowly or quickly these things with get resolved.
That’s true. A forseeable future can only be deduced what we have already seen, and as we have not seen such a society yet, and have no data on it, who’s to say?
I have believed since childhood that prisons should be places of healing and recovery rather then of “punishment”, as it was obvious to me that people being “bad” was the result of the conditions that made a person who they are, not of some kind of “magical” “evil” or so called “free will”, each of which is just a label but it is treated like an explanation, that to my view, a “bad” person was the same as someone who is injured and in need of help, since I’ve been learning ML I’ve also come to see the need for practicality, so I don’t expect it to be perfect or it’s just trash anymore, if the resources are lacking but people are still destructive, even non healing prisons may simply be needed until they aren’t, as it is all very complex you can advocate for a better system and work towards that, but it isn’t the end all be all if it isn’t perfect. Of course that’s all a moot point if Revolution isn’t achieved as in Capitalism only cares about profit and control, so prisons are there for slave labor, not even “punishment” let alone healing.
I have believed since childhood that prisons should be places of healing and recovery rather then of “punishment”
People need to get back ready into society. There are countries, where the whole prison thing is about punishment and declining human rights.
I remember reading about cases about how 13yo killed their whole family and the response was to treat them as adults (!!!). Because, no 13 year old would commit such crimes! This makes me angry every time. When the 13yo old murderer is suddenly a grown ass adult, then he also vote, drink hard alcohol, drive cars and visit a brothel, right?
So many crimes are a product of material conditions. And let’s say you have people who commit something, because they felt that way (anger, rage etc.), then they need to be healed. Integrated back to society. Even for murder, people can absolutely change.
And what if not? You can have folks, which are sadly broken. You then have to protect the society from them, by giving them places to life, where they are protected, protected form themself and where the whole society is protected. Since they are forced to give up rights, then can receive benefits.
Prisons need to be abolished. But this doesn’t mean, that nothing happens to a criminal, the whole thing gets replaced.
This is one of the topics, where you can provide more solid theory about how the practice could be. Because some countries offer ways to integrate criminals back. Are they working? Not that good actually, the reason is obviously and well documented: They go all back to the place where they come from, back to the old environment. Like a person is getting better after a longer stay in psychiatry but then has to go back to the old environment.
Edit:
I said that this goes also for murderer. I also think, that this counts for sexual crimes as well and more. As a victim I got once my hands on a digital version of a therapy manual for psychiatrist, which treat people who commited SA against minors. Stuff got me angry, since they obviously are ways of treatment. But no, let’s better create an atmosphere, where a possible assaulters don’t seek treatment, maybe commit a bad crime and then all can circlejerk because now it is the perfect time for imagining how great it is to torture a person to death.
When the root cause is systemic, the solution also needs to be systemic, like for example, a high security facility to keep them while they recover wouldn’t be the end all, but there could be more outside work as well, such as investigating the conditions that drove them to the crime, and helping them form and follow through on a plan to change those conditions, with state support in what ways are needed to change those conditions. It needs to be treated as a whole and everything relevant integrated into the process of making sure a repeat incident is unlikely, with more serious crimes having a higher bar of thoroughness, though at the same time, their life is not more important than that of others, and what one does affects the system just as the system affects them, so a persons recovery cannot come at greater expense to the rest of society then that of the life of the person that did the crime compared to those that did not, if someone murders someone, the bar for insuring that they will never murder again needs to be no less then on the moon.
May I ask someone here, if they are educated on the topic, what exactly prison abolition entails? I’d it seems like an odd question it’s because I’m not sure if I’m mischarecteruzing my understanding of it by projecting my understanding of the abolition of slavery in the US onto it.
What I mean is that, abolitionist wasn’t just an anti-slavery position, such as being in favor of compensated emancipation over a gradual period of time, instead arguing for the immediate uncompensated emancipation of all enslaved people. So essentially my confusion is, does that still apply to prison abolishinist perspectives?
Is it the call for the immediate emancipation of all imprisoned persons and shuttering of those facilities, or does it include those calling for a more gradual dismantling of the prison system? I’m not talking about those who argue that prisons should be restructured into being more rehabilitative when I say gradual. I mean a position that aims to restructure economic and social life so that it removes the material incentives that lead to criminality, alongside the decoupling of the greater economy’s reliance on prison slave labor.
Apologies if this question is too US centric, or needlessly pedantic about terminology, but I’m genuinely ignorant on the precise position of prison abolitionist, and I’d like to rectify that.
Better to sound like a fool once and learn then to portray myself as wise while stewing in ignorance for the foreseeable future.
May I ask someone here, if they are educated on the topic, what exactly prison abolition entails? I’d it seems like an odd question it’s because I’m not sure if I’m mischarecteruzing my understanding of it by projecting my understanding of the abolition of slavery in the US onto it.
Its a project aimed mainly IMO at dismantling the American prison industry - its clear 90% of people in America prisons are products of society.
I think most abolitionists are advocating for gradual incrementalism and reform of the prison system into rehab really, they want to address the root of what causes these crimes rather than just treat the excesses.
